My Experience Rolling 40 Free to Play Accounts in Genshin Impact

 

Howdy friends, I've been playing a lot of Genshin lately as you might imagine; though not an ungodly amount or anything. Still had time to play 50 odd hours of CK2 and a full clear of Iorveth's side of the Witcher 2 while I was doing this. I've made close to 40 accounts but I'm not sure of the exact number, each run takes around 45 minutes to get to Adventure Rank 7 and then you get 40 free rolls; if I was on PC it would be like 37 minutes or so and then if you could skip the cutscenes that would be another 3-4 minutes; but I'm on PS4 so PS4 load times shall rear their ugly head. This is the run, my fastest time is about 1.5 minutes faster than this one:

Minor improvements: Fast Travel works inside of buildings, menuing is pretty responsive so you can skip some levelling animations, the optimal first fight is three headshots and then one wind blast which somehow magically hits the archer with a fire aoe, the optimal last fight (i.e. in Lisa's temple) is down attack, charged R2, super, switch to MC, whirlwind the hypotenuse and then it is possible to hit the first cycle of the moving platforms which saves ~10 seconds by itself; I've done it twice.

Here's what happened on the first two rolls of the 40th run:

So it's basically just a relatively fun speed run with a fair amount of AFK potential and also some reasonable skill tests plus enemy RNG. Genshin is very fun, seemingly no matter what you're doing; but it is much more fun on the way to rank 20 and also when you have specific characters that are immensely more interesting than others. Some of those characters are insanely overpowered, like 300% stronger than their contemporaries, and some of them are just mildly overpowered, but in general the powerful characters are also more interesting to play fundamentally.

On my first account ever I got Keqing, who is extremely fun and has the wonderful utility of being able to teleport; however I never got a second wind character which meant I was gimping myself on movement speed no matter what I happened to do in the game. This eventually got under my skin enough for me to start rolling new accounts, then it turned out the speedrun was fun and relaxing. Since I'm doing it on PS4 I have to get a new email address for every account (not as easy as it was 10+ years ago), the sites I'm using currently are protonmail and yandex, both of which let you make multiple accounts without using a phone in the process.

Twenty five runs later I got the $7000 man himself Diluc, I actually wanted Jean but Diluc is preposterous so this has become my main account effectively, but I'll still do dailies on all three accounts since dailies are extremely fast and generally pretty fun/easy ways to get experience. I bothered to get all the locuses on this account to go with the double wind for silly amounts of stamina and am presently just fighting world bosses on a daily cycle, eventually I'll do all the Liyue quests; Diluc/Fischl/Barbara/Xiangling (or Razor) seems like a solid party with sustain and comical amounts of damage;

Though the new party of Klee/2 Star Sucrose/Fischl/Whoever is a lot more active since I've got 6 R2's to cycle through; plus a billion unique animations for Klee. This is the next best roll I've had, haven't decided whether I'll bother playing it or not but it will eventually get 12 characters if I do:

I'd say on average about 30% of the accounts I made wound up with 9 characters, though typically they would have a Xiangling or Barbara so no later freebie for them. The Venti banner was much better for characters since it would always give you one for 10, but it didn't have Sucrose for the movement speed. Think I rolled that banner around 750 times, just one five star in Keqing on the very first roll; but since everyone else already has Venti if you ever play multiplayer he is sort of superfluous to have yourself (if you conveniently have Diluc).

Random notes: The Main Character's name is "G" except on the first account since that's the fastest thing you can input. I picked the male character once, it took a lot of concentrated willpower to do so but thankfully the rolls were garbage. Longest cutscene (not counting the full intro since it has an input) is Venti and Dvalin; second longest is the prelude to the railshooter; railshooter is very random so you could save around 5-10 seconds there just based on what Stormterror decides to do. Xiangling is by far the most common character aside from the guaranteed Noelle pull.

Nagorno-Karabakh and Theoretical GC Positions in the next ~50 years

 

Greetings friends, it's a long awaited strategic post. War started about three weeks ago between Armenia and Azerbaijan; casualty figures are hard to guess but probably around 20,000 so far between the powers and civilians. Turkey is nominally on Azerbaijan's side but can't just invade Western Armenia or the Russians will intervene immediately touching off a much larger conflict (Russians heavily favored). Reports on the war are infrequent at best since everyone's focused on electing one idiot over another colossal idiot (even in other countries). Thus r/combatfootage is your best bet for live information.

Important things to note: this is the first war with a traditional casus belli (previous territorial acquisition) between two technologically advanced nations in ~26 years (since the last war involving Armenia and Azerbaijan); it's not a civil war and both sides have a reasonable chance of victory barring intervention. A capable commander on either side could easily turn the tide but more likely its a drawn out fight in the contested territory and when one side starts to win the other will call in allies and then it will probably just be like the Syrian Civil War; which is STILL going on with its 500,000 casualties in the past 10 years. War is a thing of the past guys, we solved it. Let's all pat ourselves on the back. Turkey will get obliterated if they actually want to fight Russia, the US will not intervene beyond bombing indiscriminately; I don't think anyone's dumb enough to poke the bear in this case.

On the topic of commanders, the last Great Commander was the old chap Napoleon Bonaparte, my dearest friend. Naps died 199 years ago, just been a bunch of mediocrity since then with some brief flashes of brilliance (Jackson, Lee, Winfield Scott Hancock, Max Hoffmann, Rommel, Slim, Manstein, etc) but no long term consolidation of power or great world spanning campaigns to indicate ascension. With the present world state and highly probable massive wars on the horizon we have to consider what positions are ideal for producing another Napoleon or Alexander or Julius Caesar.

To start with the obvious both Armenia and Azerbaijan are eligible locations, right now most of the fighting is down to drones and artillery but a Tet Offensive style of attack would probably work swimmingly and a counter offensive a la the counterattacks after Kursk or the Hundred Days could demonstrate similar tactical acuity. Where else? China of course, but China is an enormous, comically heavy favorite in any war that doesn't involve crossing the Pacific; if you're an invincible juggernaut it is quite hard to be a GC; need to be in some sort of either even fight or straight underdog situation. China's targets? Taiwan of course, Japan in another 30 years or so; maybe some random places in Indochina. I sort of like the Philippines as a strategic base for further wars so that could make some sense as a target; if any one of these countries emerged victorious then it would probably be due to a Napoleon type.

Extensions of the Armenia/Azerbaijan war? We have Turkey (whose population now numbers 82 million, similar to pre WWII Germany manpower) most obviously, I think if Turkey just massed somewhere around 1.5 million men and sufficient drones/airpower they could take over the entire Middle East in about 6 months with a Six Day War strat, that's a hard as fuck plan to come up with so would be hard to doubt the commander who accomplished it. Russia is a favorite in future wars but not necessarily unassailable, despite their vastly superior head of state and while Putin is great for stabbing you in the back he's not necessarily going to be the best at shooting you in the face (or the side a la Frederick the Great's Oblique Order); and having such a powerful leader would likely reduce the local control of the general staff. Hard to fathom Russia producing a GC soon, but it could happen.

Russia's other targets? Ukraine of course, Estonia/Latvia/Lithuania less likely but not impossible, Ukraine seems like the ideal defensive GC position, underdog but not such an underdog that victory is impossible; relatively good relations with Western Europe. While stifled by Covid I don't think any nation wants to fight a huge war right now which gives incredible advantages to aggressors; isolationism in the US is probably guaranteed for 20+ years and no one seems to give two shits about the Uighur genocide so any tactic is on the table for offensive actors. I doubt Western Europe can stay completely out of any massive conflict entirely so the strategy is probably placate them for as long as possible and then prepare for a NAP breaking Operation Barbarossa style; which you'll recall was an astounding success for the first five months or so.

Not really sure what I can do personally, but I do have financial security so I can certainly be an interested observer for a decade or two. B. H. Liddell Hart perchance?

Witcher Books Discussion and Ciri Witcher 4 Game Musings

Hello Old Friends, today I'll be discussing the Witcher Books naturally. I should say I've only read 6 of them to this point but it was all the narrative ones and the Last Wish (The Lady of the Lake leads directly into the Witcher 3 proper). I bought the Last Wish and Blood of the Elves for my Dad about a year ago and finally decided to read those two myself on a camping trip an the magnificent Pictured Rocks. The Last Wish is fantastic and the rest of the books are above average fantasy or so, probably slightly worse than someone like Timothy Zahn and nowhere near Gordon R. Dickson's Way of the Pilgrim (it should be noted, Dear Reader, that Science Fiction and Fantasy are the same genre at this point in time, all using similar tropes). Here's a quick ranking of the 6 books I've read (chronology in parentheses), I can only assume the last two would be second and third best since the short story format works much better than an overarching constant cliffhanger style:

1. The Last Wish (First)

2. The Time of Contempt (Third)

3. Tower of Swallows (Fifth)

4. Baptism of Fire (Fourth)

5. Lady of the Lake (Last)

6. Blood of the Elves (Second)

Firstly Blood of the Elves is probably dreadful if you have no frame of reference, even having one it was still unbelievably dull except for the 30% of the book where things were actually happening; it is essentially just a giant fuck-off exposition dump. I was reading the books at this point looking for more elaborations on the world state and so forth and that's the entire book, but even having played the games it was still almost completely dry and uninteresting.

Time of Contempt is a massive improvement, having a fantastic banquet scene followed immediately by the biggest event in the narrative right up until Lady of the Lake; the whole sequence is great and at this point Ciri, the star of the narrative books, is pretty much a flawless, wonderful character. That starts to go awry a bit afterward but I'll elaborate more on that continuously; for now a discussion of Tower of Swallows.

Swallows introduces lots of new elements, aggressive usage of boring, tedious framing devices (the Lady of the Lake is nearly 20% such tripe), and extremely dark hyperviolent scenes; pretty much Cormac McCarthy levels of dark. Now that's not to say Andrzej Sapkowski is anywhere near as good a writer as Mr. Cormac; he is a fantasy writer after all (though whoever wrote Hearts of Stone is pretty close to McCarthyism) but that is the tone he's shooting for. At this point Ciri is part of a group of child/young adult bandits called the Rats; under their tutelage she's been raped by a Lesbian who she promptly falls in love with (more on sexual violence shortly) and also becomes a hardened killer; perhaps having killed somewhere around 15 people prior to the start of the fifth book. The Rats run into Leo Bonhart, a not-Witcher Witcher who is basically invincible a la Judge Holden or Anton Chigurh; his motivations are not entirely clear to start with but later he's revealed as a horrible sadist. Bonhart is the second best character from the books, behind the one-chapter Calanthe; neither is even close to Gaunter O'Dimm.

Bonhart kills all six of the Rats attacking him from all sides, Ciri shows up to watch her lesbian lover/rapist (for whom the rose on her crotch is tattoo'd) die, then he ties her to a post and decapitates them all in front of her. Great scene, I don't have much more to say about it, speaks for itself. Through the rest of the book he continues to torment her but does grant her the sword Zireael (Ciri's Elven Name Swallow) so she has a fighting chance, at one point she tries to kill herself and he says "You won't do it, witcher girl. In Kaer Morhen you were taught how to kill, so you kill like a machine. Instinctively. To kill yourself you need character, strength, determination and courage. And they couldn't teach you that." Great line, speaks for itself. I envision him sounding like Michael Wincott in 1993's Three Musketeers.

Bonhart is sort of Ciri's third parent (or fifth, even sixth if you want to be technical), bringing her back from a relatively evil path to a more Witchery neutral one; he drags her around like a circus act and eventually threatens her with posthumous rape; which she recoils from naturally. Unfortunately Ciri doesn't respond to even mildly offensive sexual encounters negatively; it's only absurdly evil ones (like, say Cannibalism, Science Experiment Cesarean Section, and Necrophilia) that draw her ire. 

One need only look at my youtube thumbnails: https://www.youtube.com/user/Fredchuckdave/videos?view=0&sort=p&flow=grid to realize I am not a prude as far as respecting certain parts of the female anatomy and also understanding the nature of sexual violence in the modern world and the perhaps irreparable damage done to the female psyche by thousands of years of such things, as farcical as notions of modern peace and prosperity are amongst robber barons the notion that women will simply cease to enjoy sexual violence almost as much if not more than men is preposterous. All of that said I don't think women are "supposed" to be that way and I don't think an extremely assertive woman who's killed 50 humans, many in cold blood would just willingly submit; no matter how pragmatic and intelligent she may be; to repeated sexual advances.

This discussion ties mostly into the last book, though I should note her first experience with Mistle is somewhat believable given her state at the time, the scene with Hotspurn less so, and the scenes with the Elven High King downright reprehensible (though oddly her scene with Eredin is perfectly fine, excellent even). Essentially she's stuck in the second Elf World and her only described way out by Avallac'h of Witcher 3 fame is to get pregnant and have a kid, conveniently time is warped so she could still make it back. After about two words of protest she's down for it and has sex with the Elf King three times, he eventually commits suicide due to his inability to inseminate her; what a tragedy (Eredin's involvement is ambiguous in the books, only intentional murder in the games).

If you've only played the games you may wonder why this isn't discussed at all, not even a little bit. That's because it's terrible on so many levels and utterly preposterous for a character that is effectively the ultimate badass and also a God of Space and Time. But because she's a woman she must willingly submit or something, Ciri is not Aloy levels of intelligent but she's smart enough to realize she can obliterate anyone whenever she feels like it aside from Bonhart, a male writer should theoretically understand the character he fucking invented and not subject her to such primitive chauvinism.

The other main element the narrative books bring is the gradual assembly of a Dirty Dozen type group for Geralt to hang out with, including Dandelion, Zoltan, and Regis from the games and Cahir (fantastic character), Milva, and Angouleme; they're all great and all reminiscent of any number of scenes from the games when those characters are around. The Dwarves in the books are interchangeably the same character just with 7 different names so I suppose it's simpler to just think of all of them as Zoltan, but Zoltan is also the brief participant in the Dirty Dozening.

Here we get to the more typically controversial part of the books, the latter half of Lady of the Lake; all the characters show up to save Ciri (who once again through asinine total submission is in peril) from the comically Arch Arch-Villain Vilgefortz and his henchman the fantastic Bonhart and the inept proponent of democracy Steffan Skellen (who gave Ciri her scar with a Shuriken or a Shuriken flail; doesn't really make any physical sense if you think about how he hits her with it and the shape of the scar). And then everyone died; the end. That's it.

I suppose it should go without saying that it is lazy writing to just kill off one major character and then kill off the next one two sentences later, the next a page after that, and so on and so forth; resolving all of your loose ends and confidently saying "I'm tired of writing these books assholes!" Kills the dramatic tension, generally an unsatisfying conclusion to a ~1200 page/3 book build-up. There's nothing wrong with characters dying, hell even all the characters dying (though the killer would have to be Eredin and the Wild Hunt for it to work); but the way its done sort of robs you of any sentimentality by the end; aside from the excellent scenes with Tywin Lannister, err; I meant Charles Dance, no wait Emhyr var Emreis. 

Yennefer, Ciri, and Geralt emerge from the ruins of the anti-climactic climax and as is discussed in the Witcher 2 Yen and Geralt are killed in a nonhuman pogrom/riot in Rivia (where I'm fairly certain it did not actually all begin despite what the book says). The pogrom is better than the castle sequence and maybe could've worked, but we're in this universe where Yen and Geralt survive and the games happened. The games are better than the books overall (Last Wish notwithstanding) so I feel Game Canon is superior to Book Canon, debatable though I suppose. I'd be interested to hear the thoughts of early Polish readers since they are by and large the only people who read the books prior to the games existing, but I suspect most native English speakers probably feel about the same as me.

Geralt, Yennefer, and Dandelion are all brilliant characters, the Witcher's universe is fantastic and without the books the games would not exist; thus a top 5 game and a top 20 game all time would not exist and a top 2 character in Gaunter O'Dim would not either. So we are indebted to Mr. Sapkowski, no matter how unsatisfying the book conclusion is.

Extended Aside: The next Witcher game (which will sell 10 million copies and is therefore going to happen no matter what) is almost certainly Ciri as Witcher-girl (a frequent enough occurence in the books but only broached right at the end of Witcher 3; Bonhart's Cat medallion notwithstanding), with occasional guest appearances by all your favorite and not dead characters from the previous games. The best way to do this is make like 5-10 individual areas a la the Witcher 2; probably 2 of those being fanciful teleported worlds and the rest being in Temeria/Redania/Aedirn/Kaedwen/Nilfgaard (probably more Nilfgaard this time); somehow finding a way to justify bringing Cahir back to life would work quite well as a conclusive element. Game Ciri is fairly underdeveloped, similar to book Ciri except no catastrophic flaws to this point; but she will probably just wind up being an Androgynous Geralt and semi-indistinguishable from him in the long run.

Tenet

 

First a brief discussion of the theater-going experience; in my state there are (wisely) no theaters open so we had to go south to Toledo; we entered a cavernous, yet bland one floor mall from the opposite end and there were several hundred people in the mall with varying degrees of social distance practicing; however when we reached the theater there was no one in it and it gradually filled to a staggering fifteen viewers. This was more or less as predicted, Tenet (so far) has made $30 million domestically and in a non Covid world would have made somewhere around $200m by this point (and ~300-350m lifetime, an additional 400m or so worldwide) so had to anticipate a small audience. That said they appeared to all be stalwart movie-goers and no irritation was had throughout.

Tenet is an extremely ambitious film; picking up from Inception Nolan was not dissuaded by criticisms of how much exposition he could use so he made this entire movie nothing but exposition. That said the dialogue and performances in Inception work pretty well and the main emotional components happen in brief sudden instances, but those in Tenet are drawn out for half hour long segments with minimal resonance. The actors are fine, I suppose a bit lower tier than the usual Nolan casting extravaganza; each of them has had strong performances in the past but Nolan dialogue is a different monster than what they were used to. Even an established Shakespearean actor can have troubles parsing inscrutable dialogue.

Christopher Nolan is not here for dialogue, he's here for interesting philosophical and partially scientific concepts expressed through creative film-making. The final bit of exposition is basically yelling "DETERMINISM!" emphatically at you. If you're not familiar determinism is the idea that every action taken is based on every choice you've made in your life prior to that moment; it is an invincible argument logically and of course contravenes every notion of free will that you have. It does not preclude the perception of free will by participants merely the actual existence of free will itself. Determinism is extremely compatible with monotheism though strangely rarely emphasized by theologians, perhaps because it is difficult to understand for the layman. 

A mild spoiler warning here, I won't necessarily discuss specific elements of the film but I must discuss the primary element dictating object time travel. There are vaults in the world of Tenet where entering one side reverses your position in time so that you travel in reverse; this is very well established by the hour+ of setup for it, much like Inception (but not as elegant); and then you have a long sequence that slowly demonstrates what happens to the reverse travelling person. In Tenet there are at least two "loops" but you can infer that there are more happening behind the scenes *somewhere;* however they are all happening within the same time continuum.

The idea here is that they're trying to avoid the multiple timeline fallacy (even discussed as the Grandfather paradox in the film), but since every different version of yourself that's been through the vault exists in the world simultaneously eventually the whole world would be populated in an inevitable infinite timeline scenario; so there are actually infinite John David Washingtons, Elizabeth Debickis, Kenneth Branaghs, and Robert Pattinsons amongst us somehow magically avoiding each other; that's right an entire world filled with 6'3 anorexic women. This is a Nietzsche sentiment that is one of the better ways to express Determinism logically as well as the still tenuous primordial soup theory, but I haven't seen it in a single timeline before so that's neat if completely impossible to portray on film.

Hence the ambition, so in the limited scope of the film there are three such internal timelines within the timeline and what's really interesting is how they film it all from different perspectives. There is some CGI to be sure but I think they did actually shoot like 150 soldiers running different directions from a dozen different camera angles and somehow make it coherent. There's no Dark Knight truck flipping or Mad Max: Fury Road final car chase but the very concept of how the action scenes proceed is incredibly impressive.

The score is actually not by Hans Zimmer for once, it's Ludwig Goransson of Black Panther, Creed, and The Mandalorian fame; like seemingly every Nolan movie ever it is utterly fantastic especially in the action sequences. I guess you wouldn't listen to it by itself like you might Tron: Legacy or Ennio Morricone but man does it work well in a movie theater. Maybe Nolan is just trying to expand who he works with since there's only a handful of token "Must appear in every Nolan movie" appearances, but I assume someone like Guy Pearce could have carried the questionable dialogue and lack of viciousness; alternatively you could have made the movie R rated. In (the comically ludicrous) Lucy there is an extremely violent scene with the prime heroine of modern heroines (Scarlett Johansson, the weakest part of the Prestige) being kicked in the stomach; in this movie there's that scene except nothing is shown and the cuts don't make much sense, the villain establishing scene which utterly fails to establish the villain.

Nonetheless I still find Tenet to be a bit more philosophically compelling than Interstellar; Interstellar is unquestionably more emotional which perhaps Nolan has difficulty expressing in real life so that might be a personal accomplishment for him; but the exceedingly grounded scientific elements of Interstellar are not as interesting as the more philosophical elements in Tenet (though I'm sure it makes more sense than virtually every other time travel movie ever). For me that matters more since I'm not going into a Nolan movie to tug at my heartstrings but moreso to have a conversation with an intellectual peer and a dear old friend.

Aside: It's interesting that the film industry is pushing out quite a few movies in a short time period from now till whenever COVID ends, worldwide the movies are doing quite well, like 70% of their expected gross; enough to cover the cost at least. But domestically they are doing horribly; even something that looks incredible like WW: 1984 is probably going to gross under $100 million domestically; I think there's just too many of these movies out to re-release them all later; so at most like five will be released again in 2022 or whatever and all the rest will rot in this increasingly odd timeline.

The Last of Us 2 Spoilery Ending, Sequel Bait Discussion

Howdy friends, been a while. The Last of Us 2 is the talk of the town, or moreso a bunch of fairly inaccurate/exaggerated leaked spoilers and images are the talk; but behind all that it's actually quite a good game. That said it is sort of the inverse of the first game, I find the first Last of Us to be quite distressing and to more or less transcend the medium on a story front; the gameplay is fine, mildly engaging and occasionally very effective (the house fight most notably, especially if you use spike bombs); but in The Last of Us 2 the gameplay is what shines, being very engaging and even quite fun; also the shocking moments mostly happen while you're playing and not in cutscenes. In the first game basically all of the good story beats are cutscene exclusive, in this one there's just like one or two cutscenes that are extremely effective but blowing a guys leg off with a shotgun and listening to him scream extremely loudly (while he grabs the specific limb you shot) is pretty damn unnerving, turns out; despite something like that happening in almost every other shooter and being par for the course.

However there's no denying the story is worse and with the way it was constructed its hard to imagine a way to make it not worse; though it could maybe be a roughly top 10 game story all time (the first game is third behind The Witcher 3 and Final Fantasy Tactics, bonus points for coming out well before TW3) with perfect decisions. Did they make perfect decisions? Well if your story goes on for 30 hours and there's like 15 fake endings it kind of feels like an overwrought arthouse film that doesn't quite hit the mark. That said maybe an extremely tight 15-18 hour campaign that ended at the best spot could've been better than the first game in every way and not simply on the gameplay front.

Indeed this game has roughly 15 hours of padding, but it is very fun to play so it's not really a problem per se, it just means you'll likely have the most enjoyment out of things that you yourself are actually doing outside the actual narrative (though one of the scripted fights (against a totally anonymous foe) is exceptional as well). Case and point, my finest hour in this game was shooting a dog-walking man with a sniper rifle, laying a land mine and running as the dog was blown literally in fucking half by said mine. That's right, The Last of Us 2 is the best savage dog murder simulator on the market, Machete to a Dog's throat? Check, Arrow to the face? Check, Dog Dismemberment (a first in any AAA game?)? Check. Obviously I'm being somewhat facetious but damn is it ever satisfying.

At its best The Last of Us 2 is a spiritual successor to Spec Ops: The Line and Manhunt, with much more vivid depictions of violence. Ellie does have some Spec Ops-esque dialogue but she only throws it out every once in a while when you're not in stealth; not quite the Nolan North "GOT THE FUCKER" masterwork of yore. An argument I had about the first Last of Us springs to mind here, the discussion: whether Ellie is a mass murderer. Objectively: Yes, but she is a video game protagonist of course she would be; however since the depiction is so realistic and the character's reactions similarly so it actually holds some meaning. People thought at the time that she would have a redemption arc in this game, but on the contrary she kills way more people and the ending is extraordinarily ambiguous as to whether that will keep happening or not (spoilers: because of money it will).

On that point I guess I'll point out that Abigail is more or less a good person, she does brutally torture and murder one person and shoot another guy in the face out of the blue; but essentially everyone else she kills is in the line of duty or self defense; so she's got 2 kills on her tab to Ellie's 150-500+? I'm not sure who the game wants you to root for in the end but they did make the turn on Abigail (around the first visit to the Aquarium; because everyone loves my boy Owen), which is an astounding success all things considered. But it doesn't really matter that much because she's not Ellie and thus I still only care a fairly small amount about Abigail (and a larger amount about Lev) on a personal level; because Ellie is from a better story and is a better developed character.

On to the ending discussion a bit, there are a shitload of places where this game could have ended, it seems like the story was in development hell while the gameplay was near-perfectly refined; a common trend in movies but quite rare in games where usually something else fucks it all up. The best place for the game to end is at the Ellie Boss Fight, Abigail kills Ellie, Dina kills Abigail, Lev kills Dina; fade to black. Nice and neat; very few loose ends, no sequel bait. Also the game probably wouldn't have felt so damn long. Is this the longest linear shooter of all time? Mayhap not but it's gotta be close. The second best ending is if during the Abigail Boss Fight Ellie is killed. Both of these more or less conclude the story a few outstanding character actors notwithstanding (Tommy's arc is fucking amazing), and both of them end the franchise (in its current form) and of course reduce the chance for Sony to make more money. So instead we have obvious sequel bait in the form of the New Game Plus title screen and there being no other logical place for the story to go; the plot of the next game only has a few options for endings but they could make it interesting I suppose; more likely the journey will be satisfying but not the story itself; just like this game.

It should be noted if you wanted to you could have Ellie brutally murder Abigail or vice versa and just stop playing because the number of absurdly violent player death options in this game is massive; a choose your own adventure of post apocalyptic mishaps. It's quite time consuming to actually see or record all of them so I probably won't bother but I am certainly curious. There are so many unique melee weapon animations and each melee craft is distinct unlike the first game; in that regard it is much like Assassin's Creed 2 where you have numerous unique animations that are fun to find and figure out. Though I return again to the dogs as far as what would be most interesting and unnerving. So while the ending was happening and I was mashing square a bunch since having QTE final boss fights is cool I thought back on that guy who I shot with the shotgun; the last regular enemy in the game turned out. Just some dude; screaming in sheer agony, that is a really good narrative moment and it had absolutely nothing to do with the story. Game must be good if it can cause you to reflect on an unscripted moment so much.

Aside: There are ways to make foes surrrender in this game (typically a few melee attacks or pistol shots to the legs on the last enemy of a given encounter), I feel like there's a scripted one in the first game and that was it; the original pitch for the original was something along the lines of moral choice based on encountering groups of enemies; naturally that didn't happen.. Unfortunately if you just sit there pointing your gun at them instead of murdering them (Game: "You know you want to!") they just randomly die after a while; not sure what happens if you walk away though.

Another Aside: The Last of Us 2 has the best depiction of the unappealing nature of war in any game to this point, but since it keeps going for another 5-7 hours after that that aspect kind of loses its narrative punch; large men being terrified of small women is much more impactful in the end. Punished Ellie kind of reminds me of my shitty little cousin; ratty and irritating; tattooed and psychologically abused, but what if he was actually the ultimate badass and a lesbian? Wouldn't that be something. She's a lovable mass murderer guys, it's cool.

Story Time, Brood War Edition

What follows is a sea of memories perforated by lucidity in transcendent megolomania (a la Frank Thomas' legendary Hall of Fame speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMOUf97yWxU), I'll keep it Brood War related to start: I probably played with you a few times (Baron_Efreet was my ID), off the top of my head notable people I've played with: Shadow_Poga, Galdor(WC), Eomer(WC), Ecthelion(WC), semihalfwit, Legolas, Adun, Vexorian, I_Need_Alcohol, Isildur(WC) (in Starcraft 2 ironically), Hell_Razor (runs the discord), Term-of-Use, Duffman911 (still plays) and thousands more. Galdor was definitely the best player as far as how good he was on average across all maps, rest of the top 5 when I was playing was likely myself, Poga, and two randomly selected individuals that are not Semi, Adun, or Lego chosen at random from memory depending on the day (note I did have a Top 5 noted a few weeks ago but somehow can't remember the transient two). Alchy was usually fifth is something I vaguely remember.

As far as Pre is concerned I was playing Risk Marines (made by the DotA mapmaker Icefrog) at the time and did not adapt to LotR for a year or so when LA was the new hotness; I sucked with the Nums for a while and eventually started playing with Galdor and Alchy who had an endless number of maps. Adun at the time was always attended by his two fellatio granting lovers; Semi and Lego; in a tripartite circle jerk which legends dare not speak of. That being said this magnificent cerberus of stupidity somehow brewed up a fantastic map in War of the Soulstones and granted me great happiness as I mastered one faction after another, becoming the best player at five (out of eight) of them and utterly destroying Semi and co. In this process I taught my good friends, non LotR players, how to play WotS and Poga came along; these friends were MrPoey, SmartMan001, Lightning-Baron (who I am still in touch with), Tainted_God, and quite a few more; taking such luddites I beat the mapmaker's toadies repeatedly with such force as to satisfy any sadomasochist gleefully.

I eventually moved on, Galdor took Duff on as apprentice in my stead, a surrogate me if you will; though not nearly as strategically sound or tactically brilliant or ludicrously arrogant (a trait of greatness of course); I'll elaborate on my future goings after a brief discussion of BW remastered.

First it bears mention that Brood War was revived massively in Korea before Remastered, by a few years even, all of the legends returned in the greatest playlist in the history of mankind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=td-12J0YmqI&list=PLo2fPnM8EiQxwqKvAnVtue6K4pt82Pudp&index=137

If Starcraft was your childhood it behooves you to watch that playlist whenever depression takes hold as it most assuredly will. When remastered came out I didn't buy it, but I did play the original version with those who did; tragically LotR was not really an aspect of this aside from Last Alliance. W.Emery was my most frequent compatriot in this process, and I did play other games beyond LotR when I was a UMS monster; the aforementioned Risk Marines, Various Diplo Maps, Napoleon's Ambition, and the Civil War maps by Fenix'01; the beloved Emery and his pals gave me just about every map I could've ever wanted; excepting Star Wars AotR, WotS, and various Melkor LotR maps.

At this time I realized that my mechanical skill had become transcendent, much higher than it was before; I destroyed everyone with trivial effort at every map; the reality is that UMS players just weren't very good and while my strategic and tactical ability has always been superhuman my raw ability at games was relatively lacking except for JRPGs in youth. But after I left Brood War (after a brief stint being a top 5 player in the world at WoW and Warhammer online) I moved on to the twin masochistic endeavours of becoming good at Fighting games and playing Souls games, starting with Demon's Souls in 2009.

I won't go into overly mundane details on those tasks but this is a combo I can do in KoF XIV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_eyPPibeio and in Nioh I was the Fourth player in the world to get the hardest trophy (clear all missions); of those who played on release (top 20 including people who had the game several days early): https://psnprofiles.com/trophy/5812-nioh/13-samurai-of-legend . Note I didn't try to get the Nioh trophy quickly, it just happened that way; which I suppose is indicative of the general skill level.

Having become quite good at other games somehow translated to much better RTS skill, though of course nowhere near Korean skill, and makes me wonder what it would have been like to be even better when I was already top 5 back in the day. The answer: Probably wouldn't have mattered that much but maybe would have made my shit talk even better.

A random strand of advice I had at work motivated me to attempt making a youtube channel and it did unbelievably well; in fact I still have a single video that gets 50,000 views a month by itself (it has 2.3 million now); which is more views than this blog has gotten over its lifespan. Most people that attempt Youtube or Twitch fail immediately and now Youtube is all but inaccessible to everyone but corporations and massive singular channels and Twitch is simply the misery of conducting an audience of 12 year olds to donate you money. But somehow despite that I did quite well with youtube leading to relative financial security despite never having a permanent degree requiring Job post university; presumably more self-achieved security than virtually everyone I've ever known who's roughly the same age.

That said I am on the cusp of transitioning into a new phase, writing a (doomed) novel and then presumably becoming a university professor in around a decade. I should be quite well for 5-6 years but who knows what will happen after that; China could invade Taiwan in that timeframe and change the entire global landscape; thus making all future plans irrelevant.

Thanks whoever read this spiel.