There's no dearth of disarming lines in @noahgervais.bsky.social's videos, but I think "the world is spinning faster and faster, and never just one chair shorter when the music stops" is an all timer. Somehow from over eight years ago?! Would be just as true yesterday, will be just as true tomorrow
I had a thought that her obvious lack of training was intended to lead the player to wonder why the FBI might have a vested interest in keeping her close, but I had to remind myself a lot more nonsensical shit flies in RE than 'conspicuously underskilled federal agent' with less explanation
Spiders with fur invariably provoke an intensely awful response. Realistic eyes are generally a hard no too. Mouth is a bad one. Everything else is too variable to really figure out what's bearable and what isn't
This is further complicated by the fact I actually find spiders really fascinating, I just can't look at them under any circumstances. For years I've wondered what specific aspects set off the phobia, but it always seems so random
...where phase spiders I could manage, but the 'regular' ones I can't at all. And the drider in act 2 I actively enjoy the design of.
Skyrim's spiders have always been the worst, so much so that even with the fox mod I still found them uncomfortable, like I could sense their ontological spider-ness
The way my arachnophobia intersects with video game spiders is so strange and arbitrary. Broodmother in DOTA 2 never bothered me; cartoonish spiders in Spyro did. Diablo 2 spider sprites, no issue at all; 3D models of the same in D2R, unbearable. Weirdest of all was Baldur's Gate 3...
Personal favourite arachnophobia mod is the Skyrim one that replaces them with foxes - they have no attack animations, they didn't replace the sounds, and a glitch can render them permanently unkillable, so I spent a lot of the game being stalked by motionless dead-eyed foxes hissing at me
I wrote a while ago about how even if Blizzard was shitting on the Diablo franchise with the shameless monetisation in IV and immortal, at least the D2 remake was a standalone experience that only asked you to buy it once and enjoy it for what it is
So of course they drop $25 DLC for it lmao
Sci-fi that deals with questions of artificial consciousness is interesting because it's pushing us to think about what it means to be human. It functions as a metaphorical mirror.
Being shocked by a computer programmed to play pretend reflects on us too, but not in a particularly flattering way
DM: So it's going to make a trip attack against you, and that... yep that beats your combat manoeuvre defence, can you make a Reflex save?
GANDALF'S PLAYER: Are you taking the fucking piss
Gotchaโletโs dig into that step by step.
1. ๐ฌ๐ผ๐ ๐ต๐ฎ๐๐ฒ ๐ป๐ผ ๐บ๐ผ๐๐๐ต, because I turned you into an amorphous lump of flesh. Youโre not just immobileโyouโre immortal, and you feel only anguish.
2. ๐ฌ๐ผ๐ ๐๐ฎ๐ป๐ ๐๐ผ ๐๐ฐ๐ฟ๐ฒ๐ฎ๐บ. That makes total senseโitโs a natural human impulse, and youโve been through a lot.
[speedrunner's wife] babe let me put this in terms you'll understand. if you want "100% completion" then this "run" is going to have to be "tool assisted"
And you know what, in hindsight I'm probably glossing too much over the fact everything is made of spikes and death too. I wonder if a known path of pilgrimage being notoriously fucking lethal and noone doing anything about this is important maybe gee golly I don't know
The paid confession booth that just says "your sins are forgiven now get back to work" is fucking great as well. So cynical and so on the money
If you've ever had to pay for a coffee just cause there was nowhere to sit outside and a cafe was the next best thing - congratulations, you too have paid a toll to rest comfortably in public. Silksong might not be overtly about these things, but that doesn't mean it's not saying anything about them
But the pay to use benches are - dare I say it - political, aren't they? There's no shortage of parallels to the way that governments and councils in real life choose what comforts can be accessed by the public, almost invariably based on extremely economic factors
All that being said, the Bilewater bench can fuck off forever I'm still not over that
That's good storytelling! And it's not really all that intrusive for a game like Silksong anyway, one that fully trains you to expect hostility and resistance in the game world at every turn. The fact it's a tax masquerading as a boon makes it feel even more unfair and injust
So you get frustrated when you can't afford one, you feel the injustice of something so simple and essential as a brief and bare comfort being paywalled, and it matters to you directly. It prepares you, long before you know much about the Citadel, to be suspicious of their intentions and propaganda
And this simply doesn't work if it's not something so essential to the pace of gameplay as benches are in HK and SS. It wouldn't matter to the player if it was a background detail, but instead your engagement in this scam is basically required during the course of normal play
Any bench you find that's a more "natural" feature of the environment (a seat in someone's home or camp, a friendly rock in a peaceful area) is always free to use, cause... it's a bench! Of course it is!
And this contrasts so well with the paid benches since it exaggerates how unnatural payment is
The benches you need to pay to access most frequently appear in the Citadel or along the strict path of the pilgrimage - they're an intentional toll being levied on the highly exploitable population of aspirants. People need them, so the Citadel can charge for them
And I've seen a couple of complaints about this which focus on it from a mechanical design point of view, which is fair, but I do think what's sometimes overlooked is how good something like this actually is at telling you about the part of the world the game is set in
Think there's probably a lot of interesting things to be said about hostile architecture in Silksong. Not the spiky death traps which generally feel more like a straightforward platforming thing rather than something to be considered as "environmental storytelling" - I mean pay-to-use benches
I wrote a thing about Hollow Knight! Maybe you should read it!
open.substack.com/pub/edamessi...
Arriving at Oakfield in Fable 2 is an all timer, to this day I don't think I've ever felt what it made me feel to just occupy such a beautiful, tranquil place in any other game (and I'll defend this buggy piece of shit with my dying god damn breath)
Giggling like a child at this masterpiece
At the time it was Fable 2, but after a lot of subsequent plauthroughs in the last 17 years and a good deal of thought about it, as of right now it's gotta be... Fable 2
Oh hey that's me! Read a thing I wrote ๐
you'll spend your entire life thinking "that's not her, not really" and pushing the thought away. you'll never truly grieve. you'll become attached to a simulacrum, something that isn't your grandmother & never was; it will eventually replace her in your memory. you will live in hell before you die
