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Bird twins just kinda boring.
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May 9, 2024 04:11
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So did Sparkle even end up doing anything? She handed out some invitations I guess
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May 9, 2024 04:13
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DeadFatDuckFat posted:So did Sparkle even end up doing anything? She handed out some invitations I guess Either the punchline hasn't landed yet, since we still have more Penacony story left or she was even more of a red herring and rube than even she thought, given that she was caught up in Ena's Dream too. It's entirely possible that she thought she knew more about what was going on than she really did, and badly underestimated what was really going to happen at the Charmony festival
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May 9, 2024 04:19
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facepalmolive posted:Triple harmony Welt pseudo-sustain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZjK2Wy4-vk This is just Welt Sustain but slower cause Robin isn't doing anything extra for BE tho
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May 9, 2024 04:22
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eh my point is more that it's underwhelming that the player party never really engages with or fleshes out their implied stance that "life will naturally lead to suffering and pain, but this is fine, even though some people have no choice in how they live". like no one actually meaningfully responds to the dove story, outside of robin's assertion that it must have wanted to fly and getting to fly was clearly worth its death, an argument you can absolutely make but which is presented in a very conclusory fashion. it'd be much more interesting imo to get someone like firefly or boothill or acheron (all of whom are shown in-game or in the various codex materials to have suffered serious loss and kept moving forward) to engage with sunday directly a little more before we get to the "well i guess you're doing Dream Crimes so we gotta just run you over with the train." the "uh actually robin got shot but she kept going forward" story introduced here very clumsily offers an anecdotal response to sunday's position and takes the spot of the kind of thing i'm envisioning here, but there were characters far better positioned to engage with these ideas at length. and especially in a sci-fi setting with stuff like simulated universe where the lines between reality and simulation/dream are already blurry, using "well dreams are fake, so" to foreclose further conversation feels like a copout. and it's not even so much that i think the ending's bad or anything i just would have much rather spent our excessive word count on that actual central philosophical conflict than on the random festival interlude or any of the dozen conversations in 2.x so far of people vaguely implying things at each other back and forth. that said i have previously expressed that i very badly wanted to hit an enemy with the train and i'm delighted we made it to that so soon. e: also, one hears not infrequently (mostly elsewhere online, but also in this thread) that hoyoverse is willing to get interesting and philosophical and that influences how I'm reading this. the writing here is really enjoyable on a genre level but the relative depth to which they are willing to take it fails to measure up to their word count and the weight of the (generally pretty apt!) literary allusions they keep making. Valentin fucked around with this message at 04:45 on May 9, 2024 |
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May 9, 2024 04:36
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The game engages with Sunday's philosphical caged bird argument by following that with the Watchmaker backstory of the like 'other side of Penacony' which was some dude who loved adventure who made some like tough and brave decisions alongside some buds and suffered and struggled a lot along the way. But he still had a very rewarding life and left behind a place in the dream that was a positive place for the disadvantaged and 'weak'. And that way of life is impossible in Sunday's benevolent dream prison. It's not exactly confronting the argument so much as putting forth another idea as for what the best form of the dream called Penacony is, but the story of Mikhail is told a lot more compellingly than Sunday's deal so y'know I came out of it going "Yeah! You just don't get it Sunday. Trailblazing is what its all about!"
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May 9, 2024 04:59
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Mulva posted:Then you forgot the fact that anyone playing in one go is also going to have done the next bit where the IPC is going to make their move. Like remember that? Yea, we solved the big crisis! Well now the IPC is making their move to take over, and considering the ending we probably aren't just going to let that happen. Good thing we spent so much time with Topaz and Aventurine, so we don't actually have to build them up in the next patch! Like amazingly enough Star Rail isn't over, there have to be story beats in the future too, you know? You forgot the fact that this is a story arc with a big climax in this patch. A climax which apparently does not build on all the parts leading up to it. You could call it foreshadowing, except again that's a matter of pacing. They just put too much emphasis on something that wouldn't pay off at the climax, without even nodding to it at the big moment when everyone comes together. It's just weird writing. Trust me, I know a thing or two after doing this fudging awful movie editing minigame a lot.
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May 9, 2024 05:11
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Valentin posted:eh my point is more that it's underwhelming that the player party never really engages with or fleshes out their implied stance that "life will naturally lead to suffering and pain, but this is fine, even though some people have no choice in how they live". There's nothing to say. It's true, and that's the price of life. Like there is no debate or depth, there's just reiterating the point. Life kind of loving sucks, and most people are going to fail more than the succeed. And some people are only going to fail and die miserable deaths. Possible young, too! That's it, that's the deal. The entire episode is about nihility, and Nihility. Everything you do is leading towards that void, and most of what you do is pointless. Do you want to tap out? Escape into a dream and avoid pain? You'll still die in the end, but I guess you'll die without hardship. Most of the objections aren't about the stark facts, because they are facts. It's about choice, and how they are robbed of it. None of our characters are going to meaningfully engage beyond that because of who they are. It's either Trailblazers or people who have hit circumstances that force them to deal with the issue beforehand. Acheron isn't going to have much to say because her entire existence is a refutation of the point. Firefly is a loving genetically engineered child soldier dying slowly, who only wants to live her own life. They all value choice and living with pain. They've made up their minds a long time ago. Why do we sleep? To wake from our dreams. They are beautiful, and they can be empowering, but they are dreams. Most of our characters are, even when dealing with incredible hardship, exceptionally hopeful people. Like Acheron. What is her assessment of the Nihility? If it's the shadow of all human fear, how great must the light beyond it be? In a practical sense that's almost delusional in it's hopefulness, but it *is* a metaphysical issue. The Nihility is also couched in terms of dreams, and the dead trapped in it lost in their own fantasies. But it's not hopeless, Acheron the Watcher can help them to the shore, and they can move on. How does she describe that? "Return to the waking world". The moments of our lives that give existence meaning are all that stand in the face of IX, and to be asleep is to be robbed of those things. It's certainly something for the player to think about, but the characters never would. And shouldn't, considering who they are. Clarste posted:You forgot the fact that this is a story arc with a big climax in this patch. A climax which apparently does not build on all the parts leading up to it. You could call it foreshadowing, except again that's a matter of pacing. They just put too much emphasis on something that wouldn't pay off at the climax, without even nodding to it at the big moment when everyone comes together. It's just weird writing. Trust me, I know a thing or two after doing this fudging awful movie editing minigame a lot. ......what do you think this story was about? Because I could easily or double or triple this post just talking about Aventurine and why he's a perfect viewpoint character for this story [Death, it's about death and meaning. Don't let it being the Harmony planet fool you, every moment of this story is about dealing with Nihility.], but what exactly do you think the story was that he was "wasted"? Mulva fucked around with this message at 05:50 on May 9, 2024 |
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May 9, 2024 05:42
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I mean, the point of 2.1 (Aventurine's plotline) in relation to 2.2 is pretty clear to me Aventurine could not exist in Sunday's Order, The Dream of Ena would never allow a life like Aventurine's to continue, and Aventurine for all his tragedy and trauma and pain has determined to be awake/live and not sleep/die. They're equating Sunday's dream as a slow death without hope to escape, no matter how beautiful it's still going to kill you with no hope of a better (or worse) situation than the one you're in. Which is what Aventurine is all about, that he risks his own life and nothing else for the sheer desire to keep going until his luck runs out. One of the most important functions of dreams are that they inspire you to make them reality, Ena's Order robs you of making your own dreams reality, because your dream is Sunday's Dream, and he decides what your life will be forever more. Lord_Magmar fucked around with this message at 05:46 on May 9, 2024 |
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May 9, 2024 05:44
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Sometimes you playing an rpg and a party member gets a fairly silod off character study that mostly exists apart from the movements of the main plot. And usally its cool and I dig it. That's just the way it goes.
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May 9, 2024 05:50
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With all the meme dialogue options, I'm extremely mad I never had one referencing "Fight for all that is beautiful in the world." 
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May 9, 2024 05:54
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Mulva posted:None of our characters are going to meaningfully engage beyond that because of who they are. this is what it boils down to and I'm saying that in a script that explicitly acknowledges this fact (as Sunday does when he points out that of course the astral express, being heroes, are always going to rise above), this is a boring choice and it'd be much more interesting to go beyond it and have them engage with it regardless. Or, better, engage with some of the strung-out dreamchasers of Penacony directly, the nearest thing in-game to the dove. I get that everyone on the side of good in 2.2 believes in the value of life, sees inherent good in the resolve to survive, and has the heroic mettle to see it through. I'm saying that's heroic fantasy boilerplate, and they raise more interesting avenues of conflict but set them aside, which is disappointing. Valentin fucked around with this message at 06:03 on May 9, 2024 |
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May 9, 2024 05:55
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i mean tbh sundays plan is obviously fascist as hell despite the pretty language he dresses it up in, he's just projecting his own weakness onto everyone else, with or without their consent. so i dont really know why the heroes *have* to Debate Him, Liberals. i think they could have dug into the specifics a bit more but
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May 9, 2024 06:02
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I mostly just think the game's too wordy anyways and would like to see them put those words to better use tbh, it's not much more than that. a storyline that looked a little more closely at totalitarianism and how it readily emerges from/appeals to a "soft" and "gentle" sense of fear and compassion rather than just insecure rage or hatred of the other would've been neater than what we got, imo
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May 9, 2024 06:06
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Valentin posted:this is what it boils down to and I'm saying that in a script that explicitly acknowledges this fact (as Sunday does when he points out that of course the astral express, being heroes, are always going to rise above), this is a boring choice and it'd be much more interesting to go beyond it and have them engage with it regardless. Or, better, engage with some of the strung-out dreamchasers of Penacony directly, the nearest thing in-game to the dove. I get that everyone on the side of good in 2.3 believes in the value of life, sees inherent good in the resolve to survive, and has the heroic mettle to see it through. I'm saying that's heroic fantasy boilerplate, and they raise more interesting avenues of conflict but set them aside, which is disappointing. I think it's just a weakness of a game about such a huge cast. This story borrows pretty heavily from the Theatre of Domination and the Finale of HI3, and the weaknesses you're describing aren't there in those stories because Kiana starts off Theatre of Domination dealing with some pretty heavy poo poo. The suicidal feelings she's overcoming are her own. Which can happen because she's a long running character and she got here after multiple plot arcs that spanned years. It's just an inherent weakness of the style of game Genshin and HSR are vs HI3. And HSR is rapidly hitting the character singularity with how many it pumps out.
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May 9, 2024 06:06
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Mulva posted:......what do you think this story was about? Because I could easily or double or triple this post just talking about Aventurine and why he's a perfect viewpoint character for this story [Death, it's about death and meaning. Don't let it being the Harmony planet fool you, every moment of this story is about dealing with Nihility.], but what exactly do you think the story was that he was "wasted"? We didn't need his entire life story, like twice. I have only ever been taking about pacing. Yes, he is one anecdote among many that fleshes out the theme they are going for, but he gets like 5 times as much focus and screentime as he actually needs to do that. Which works well for selling a gacha character, I suppose, but as a complete story it just looks a little weird in retrospect.
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May 9, 2024 06:28
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Eimi posted:I think it's just a weakness of a game about such a huge cast. This story borrows pretty heavily from the Theatre of Domination and the Finale of HI3, and the weaknesses you're describing aren't there in those stories because Kiana starts off Theatre of Domination dealing with some pretty heavy poo poo. The suicidal feelings she's overcoming are her own. Which can happen because she's a long running character and she got here after multiple plot arcs that spanned years. It's just an inherent weakness of the style of game Genshin and HSR are vs HI3. And HSR is rapidly hitting the character singularity with how many it pumps out. No, it's not an inherent weakness of a story with a large cast. I have played other games and read other stories with casts just as large or larger that have done a better job of it. It's about efficient use of time, ie: pacing.
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May 9, 2024 06:35
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i think i've had my fill of characters talking cryptically about things everyone in the conversation knows but the player doesn't
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May 9, 2024 06:36
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Clarste posted:I have only ever been taking about pacing. Yes, and you feel like they wasted time getting to the point with him. So first we need to know what you think the point is, because if we are talking at about different things then we'll have different conclusions. If you accept that it's about death, and meaning, and how we choose to face hardship? How are you selling that conflict in 10 minutes of backstory? And he serves dual purposes of both working on the themes of the planet he's on and also building the IPC who is going to be a thing later. And when I say later, I both mean "in the next patch and also going forward". He's serving a bunch of story purposes at any given moment, and one of them is always the direct themes of the planet he's on and the story he's currently in. There are very few of the PCs that will ever meaningfully engage in the central conflict because of who they are, so you kind of need to make a new character that will. And so, Aventurine. Who has absolutely had as miserable a life as anyone, but who still rejects the dream. Why? Because his family isn't there. That's it, that's his core. It's not real without them.
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May 9, 2024 06:43
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Eimi posted:With all the meme dialogue options, I'm extremely mad I never had one referencing "Fight for all that is beautiful in the world." If we ever do we are going to be in some serious poo poo.
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May 9, 2024 06:44
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It doesn't need to be 10 minutes, it just should probably have been less than 3 hours or whatever. He gets more screentime than almost anyone else in this story, and a lot of it is repetitive because they feel this need to sprinkle the whole thing as little hints, then go back and explain all those hints in detail, and then have his future self interrogate him over all those hints, etc etc. You'd think he's the main character of the story arc, except then he just vanishes halfway through to, one assumes, set up a future plotline.
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May 9, 2024 06:49
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I think Aventurine needed his life story twice. Because it was cool mostly. Don't think it added a whole lot to the story of Penacony but it added to my enjoyment of the video game because it was one of the better written things in it. E: I guess actually i'm selling it short. It added a whole lot to the story of Penacony by being one of my fav parts of it.
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May 9, 2024 06:51
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I can respect that. Honestly I think his story was better told than the main plot.
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May 9, 2024 06:52
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did we ever learn who miss mirror from the clockie stories is?
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May 9, 2024 06:53
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Misha and Gallagher should have gotten a 3 hour backstory imo. I think their parts here were my favorite at least as far as like character wriiting goes.
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May 9, 2024 06:54
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insane opinions on the story itt
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May 9, 2024 06:54
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Clarste posted:It doesn't need to be 10 minutes, it just should probably have been less than 3 hours or whatever. It wasn't. quote:He gets more screentime than almost anyone else in this story He doesn't. It has an outsized place in your mind because you didn't like it. On balance? He has less time than Acheron and Firefly. More than Robin and Sunday, although not much. That doesn't make you wrong for not liking it, but it is coloring your view of how much of the story it was.
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May 9, 2024 06:55
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stories that stop in the middle for 3 hours of a character's backstory that serves no purpose other than that are insanely badass
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May 9, 2024 06:56
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That's what its all about
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May 9, 2024 06:57
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Mulva posted:It wasn't. You're misunderstanding, I loved that part. Maybe I miscounted the minutes, but it overshadows the rest of the story. I didn't care as much about Robin or Sunday because I wanted to see what happened to Aventurine.
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May 9, 2024 06:59
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Then that's an entirely different problem, but it is a real problem that can gently caress with a story. Don't write so good I guess. But every single thing *in* his story is thematically relevant to both the story of Penacony and the overarching issue with the East India Compa....sorry, IPC. He's a perfect character that does a lot of work in not a lot of time. Like objectively Sunday gets a lot of characterization done in a really short amount of time too, you know exactly who that guy is and understand him perfectly by the end of the patch, but he's 1,000,000% going to get overshadowed by the job they did with Aventurine for a lot of people. If that bit just hit harder with you, yeah, that's just going to kind of gently caress up the rest of the story.
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May 9, 2024 07:04
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jokes aside i think its a matter of like expectations. i saw the aventurine stuff as self-contained, it had a beginning, middle, and end. it was basically just an expose into this guy whos just a random midboss from the protags' perspectives, and then they defeat him as a midboss in the story. it works on a thematic level as part of the larger story but i dont think aventurine needed anymore and wasnt expecting anything. sunday and robin not getting great setup is, imo, a separate problem. i think 2.0 is the weakpoint there, not 2.1. the firefly setup stuff is alright but pretty stock, and it eats up basically all the setup for penacony rather than setting up the characters actually connected to penacony, sunday and robin.
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May 9, 2024 07:04
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Mulva posted:Then that's an entirely different problem, but it is a real problem that can gently caress with a story. Don't write so good I guess. But every single thing *in* his story is thematically relevant to both the story of Penacony and the overarching issue with the East India Compa....sorry, IPC. He's a perfect character that does a lot of work in not a lot of time. Like objectively Sunday gets a lot of characterization done in a really short amount of time too, you know exactly who that guy is and understand him perfectly by the end of the patch, but he's 1,000,000% going to get overshadowed by the job they did with Aventurine for a lot of people. Yes, I can agree with that.
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May 9, 2024 07:05
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Endorph posted:jokes aside i think its a matter of like expectations. i saw the aventurine stuff as self-contained, it had a beginning, middle, and end. it was basically just an expose into this guy whos just a random midboss from the protags' perspectives, and then they defeat him as a midboss in the story. it works on a thematic level as part of the larger story but i dont think aventurine needed anymore and wasnt expecting anything. sunday and robin not getting great setup is, imo, a separate problem. i think 2.0 is the weakpoint there, not 2.1. the firefly setup stuff is alright but pretty stock, and it eats up basically all the setup for penacony rather than setting up the characters actually connected to penacony, sunday and robin. I feel like, conceptually, that should be what companion quests are for. Although admittedly I wouldn't be able to tell you which bits should go in the main story and which bits should be a character sidequest, or how exactly you'd even make them work when separated.
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May 9, 2024 07:16
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Clarste posted:You're misunderstanding, I loved that part. Maybe I miscounted the minutes, but it overshadows the rest of the story. I didn't care as much about Robin or Sunday because I wanted to see what happened to Aventurine. They simply made a man too cool.
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May 9, 2024 07:17
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Clarste posted:I feel like, conceptually, that should be what companion quests are for. Although admittedly I wouldn't be able to tell you which bits should go in the main story and which bits should be a character sidequest, or how exactly you'd even make them work when separated. yea but i think the aventurine story also kind of requires the boss fight and big climax also i think they made the right call. like i said i think the bigger issue is just that they only have 3 patches instead of 4 and they wanted to setup the firefly stuff more than they wanted to setup the sunday/robin stuff
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May 9, 2024 07:19
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I made the mistake of fighting the endboss with my new E6 Xueyi because I was eager to try her out, and with fast-forward force-disabled, it took an entire Amber Era. Meanwhile, Acheron's team can demolish the Echo of War version in about two minutes. Sad.
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May 9, 2024 07:37
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were you using harmony MC because they make xueyi a lot better
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May 9, 2024 07:41
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Yeah, but I brought Aventurine (because I wasn't sure how much burst damage there might be) and Silver Wolf (because I thought I might need the Quantum weakness) instead of Gallagher and Ruan Mei, which was probably a mistake in retrospect. I wasn't expecting a story boss to be such an HP sponge in general.
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May 9, 2024 07:57
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FractalSandwich posted:Yeah, but I brought Aventurine (because I wasn't sure how much burst damage there might be) and Silver Wolf (because I thought I might need the Quantum weakness) instead of Gallagher and Ruan Mei, which was probably a mistake in retrospect. It's like Azdaha in Genshin: just a big fuckoff wall of health (and in this case, shields). I throw the IPC Crew+RM at it on EoW, and they survive just fine, but each fight takes eight loving minutes.
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May 9, 2024 08:52
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