Top Ten Characters in Romance of the Three Kingdoms

 

Another post so soon? Unthinkable. I was pondering about Lan being Guan Yu in Wheel of Time but figured I might as well just make an RotK post; Romance of the Three Kingdoms or simply Three Kingdoms is the Iliad of the Eastern World; revered in China, Japan, and both Koreas. It is also probably the foremost military textbook that China has and therefore should be studied extensively in Western military academies as well, it is very simply one of the best books ever written and likely the third or fourth most influential behind various religious texts and Mein Kampf. I generally read Moss Roberts' translation but there are completely free versions online of Three Kingdoms as well. I suppose it should be indicative of how much I respect the book that I can recall and discuss so much at any given moment relative to Wheel of Time's binge reading to see what Nynaeve gets angry at this time. All of these characters would be a 10/10 on the Wheel of Time scale and probably by any other measure as well. Also there's plenty of outstanding artwork and even shrines, figurines, memorials, entire fucking temples and cities dedicated to these people since they were real historical figures on top of being legendary. Four of the ten are currently available as limited time Hearthstone skins for example, though I'd advise against giving Blizzard money presently.

#1 Chen Gong

Not Cao Cao, not Zhuge Liang, not even Lord Guan himself? Madness you say. Well I guess Chen Gong mostly leads into the Cao Cao discussion easily and is simply the best of all the honor bound characters; we'll see if Dong Cheng can make it on the list as well. Chen Gong is initially an adviser for Cao Cao before realizing how cruel Mengde can be and eventually winds up throwing in his lot with Lu Bu. While Lu Bu is certainly foolish (though offensively legendary) he is not evil inherently and thus Chen Gong eventually dies at White Gate Tower rather than serving our primary antagonist, here's at least one translation of the poem honoring him:

Neither hope of life nor fear of death moved him.
How brave was he, a hero indeed!
But his lord heeded not his words,
Wherefore in vain possessed he great talents.
Nevertheless, in that he stood by his master.
To parting with wife and mother,
He merits our pity and profound respect.
Who would resemble Chen Gong
That day he died at the White Gate Tower?

We'll have a bit more on him in a bit as the Cao Cao discussion should be very long, but he is one of the first that Cao Cao says the famous words to "You have been well, I trust, since we parted."

"I hope you have been well since we last saw each other, Chen Gong?" said Cao Cao.

"Your ways were crooked, and so I left you," said Chen Gong.

"You say I was crooked; and what of your serving Lu Bu?"

"Though he was a fool, he did not resemble you in deceit and wickedness."

In the book it seems like Chen Gong is regarded as Cao Cao's equal strategically since he frequently has strategies that meet or exceed the opponent's, he is mostly done in by Lu Bu's foolishness a la Hitler going after the Caucauses and Stalingrad simultaneously instead of listening to Manstein. There are numerous real world situations that parallel the ones in Three Kingdoms and of course many of the battles actually happened and happened quite similarly to how they're discussed, these are 1800 year old battles and a 700+ year old book (often considered the first novel); but they still ring true today.

#2 Cao Cao, Mengde, Ah Man, August Emperor of Wei

"Better to wrong the world than have it wrong me first!" is Cao Cao's (or T'sao T'sao if you prefer) character defining phrase. As he and Chen Gong flee from a farmers hut where he's murdered them under the erroneous suspicion that they were plotting against him. This isn't the most interesting of his gambits but its definitely the best individual quote to sum up the character; by far the best general historically in the Three Kingdoms era he squashed essentially every ruler in Northern China prior to the famous Battle of Red Cliffs or Chi Bi that is the central dramatic event of the entire book (and one of the most decisive battles of all time historically); it is difficult to say what would have happened if he did unify China at that moment, most likely Wei would never have fallen to Jin so you'd have like a 150-300 year Wei Dynasty with Cao Cao as its much heralded founder. His commentary on the Art of War still exists.

Another of my favorites is when his army is running low on supplies in lieu of simply getting the supplies or retreating to restore troop morale he comes up with a brilliant scheme. He calls in the quartermaster and says "You have something I require, general, I hope you would not begrudge it?" ... "Your head, to show the men;" he then cares well for said general's family afterward and assures him that his sacrifice will not be in vein. Most importantly the scheme works and has no negative ramifications later; this speaks to the extremely genuine feel that Three Kingdoms has, which I suppose is easier to create if you're working with a historical basis.

Historical comparisons to Cao Cao include Vladimir Putin and Julius Caesar but he's also a very prominent influence in fiction; the best video game character by far Delita from Final Fantasy Tactics is pretty much a 1 for 1 Cao Cao analogue (with some mild emotional introductory elements). He does have motivations and thus doesn't fall in the Iago, The Joker, or Anton Chigurh camp necessarily but could easily be confused with Daniel Plainview from There Will Be Blood; a legendary, exceptional villain and probably a top 10 or so military commander in actual Chinese history to boot (possibly even the foremost below the Wu Qi, Sun Pin, Jiang Ziya tier.)

#3 Zhuge Liang, Kongming, Prime Minister of Shu

It is important to make a distinction between historical Zhuge Liang and fictional Zhuge Liang, but in the book and widely regarded amongst common Chinese people as the foremost military strategist of all time. In reality Kongming was a political genius and a reasonably solid military commander, I think if he was actually on a Napoleon or Alexander level then Shu certainly would have won the struggle and restored the Han Dynasty; but since he was such a political genius his legend endures better than his actual self and must have been the core motivation to write the book alongside Liu Bei.

Despite the the differences the most important thing that Zhuge Liang did historically was convince Wu to fight the Battle of Red Cliffs (and help plan it but that was mostly Zhou Yu's feat) which is the central point of the best chapter in the book, Chapter 43 Kongming debates the southern officials; which is an outstanding treatise for anyone that wants to learn how to debate in a verbal setting; a rousing destruction of pedantry. Somewhere around 13 historical dudes come forward to try to argue against him and he demolishes each and every argument with ease and directly causes the Three Kingdoms period to occur thus changing the course of Chinese history for at least 200-300 years. This is a thing that actually happened.

As far as his various military strategems (there are dozens upon dozens) the vast majority of Kongming's stuff would work in reality and a large number of them did happen, I still think that he could have prevented Yi Ling from being such a disaster even if he wasn't there so my opinion of historical Zhuge Liang is not necessarily the highest. Fictional Zhuge Liang is an unparalleled ideal of wise state management, military strategic and tactical genius, as well as how to handle a weak ruler following a strong one and also how to set up a fairly strong succession to your own position; there are very few weaknesses in Fictional Kongming's reasoning and thoughts, at most you could insult his occasional mysticism over actual strategic plans; but often that simply informs something that would have worked in reality. After he dies the book rapidly declines but I have grown fonder and fonder of the fourth volume over time.

#4 Zhang Liao

It's difficult to say how historic Liao's portrayal is in the book but since he isn't Shu (thus negating Luo Guanzhong's bias) and he definitely won the Battle of He Fei while grossly outnumbered it is safe to assume that he was an incredibly capable commander on top of being an excellent warrior and honorable to boot. His famous line is "Lu Bu, oh fool, death is but death so why do you fear it?" Whilst Lu Bu is cringing before Cao Cao, and this earns him Mengde's respect from which he becomes one of the leading generals of Wei. Frequently when Cao Cao or Sima Yi is leading 90% of Wei's troops on some western campaign Zhang Liao is on the eastern front holding the entire might of Wu at bay with seemingly just a few hundred horsemen. The odds given in the book are 800 to 100,000; perhaps apocryphal but still indicative of the feat (unlike Herodotus' numbers there were actually 100k sized armies in the era and preceding eras; China has always had lots of people relative to everywhere else).

#5 Lord Guan, Guan Yu, Yunchang, Lord of Hanshou Precinct

Guan Yu is the Taoist God of War, and he was also a real historical dude. His portrayal in Three Kingdoms is probably the most embellished of any character but nonetheless his historical achievements were still impressive and his character arc in the book is maybe the most tragic and emotional of all the 2400 pages worth.  It's difficult to say just how strong a warrior he was but he certainly seemed to be a capable administrator and general on top of being a mighty enough warrior to face Lu Bu without dying. I actually think his scene with Hua Tuo is his best, where he sits perfectly still as he is being surgically operated upon, continuing to read and be merry all the while.

A sterling example of honor and formidable ferocity, statues and other objects of worship abound of him to this day, the easiest example I can give is Chow Yun Fat praying to a statue of Lord Guan in Hardboiled before he goes on to John Woo style action sequences; saying "Guan I need help." Hard to say whether he merits much historical study beyond Fan Castle but in fiction a truly wonderful character. His Guan Dao weapon is naturally named after himself and became a very popular polearm for over a thousand years after his death; though it's unclear how or why the first one was created.

Guan Yu is extremely common in video games in virtually every genre, even moreso than Zhuge Liang. I believe League of Legends and DotA both have a Guan equivalent as does Smite and there might have been Guan Yu skins in Heroes of the Storm as well. Not aware of him showing up in FPS' but its certainly possible. Chops people in half.

#6 Zhang Song

Zhang Song has a fairly minor role in the grand scheme of things but man is it an incredible one. First he gives the keys to the kingdom (of Shu) to Kongming and then immediately goes to shit all over Cao Cao, first with Yang Xiu:

Zhang Song smiled, saying, "If what I have heard is true, Cao Cao's learning throws no gleaming light on the way of Confucius or Mencius, nor does his military skill illumine the art of Sun Zi or Wu Qi. He seems to understand the doctrine of brute force and holding on to what advantages he can seize, but I see not how he can give you any valuable training or enlighten your understanding."

and later with Cao Cao himself

"O Prime Minister, I know well that when you march out your army, you always conquer. I knew it when you attacked Lu Bu at Puyang; and when you fought Zhang Xiu at Wancheng; and when you met Zhou Yu at the Red Cliffs; and when in Huarong Valley you encountered Guan Yu; and on that day when you cut off your beard and threw away your robe at Tong Pass; and when you hid in a boat to escape the arrows on the Yellow River. On all these occasions, no one could stand against you."

Overall a much better version of Mi Heng or Zuo Ci and probably the best or second best rhetorician to grace the book. Pretty sure he is in SGZ but not written so magnificently there.

#7 Zhou Yu, Gongjin

Obligatory Wu Character, there's quite a few of them in the top 20 but not the top 10; Zhou Yu historically is a much better general than Zhuge Liang but in the book most of his competence is stolen by Zhuge Liang's theatrics (stealing arrows, calling forth the wind, Jing Province thievery). The relatively short shrift that Wu is given means all the good characters have somewhat similar archetypes; Lu Xun, Lu Meng, and Zhou Yu are semi-interchangeable aside from longevity. But just for his historic eminence I'll put Zhou Yu here, even if Sun Ce and Gan Ning are more entertaining.

#8 Zhao Yun, Zilong

Zhao Yun is possibly the most badass dude (in terms of singular combat ability) from the era aside from Lu Bu and not a drunken buffoon. I'm not entirely sure how historically accurate his depiction is and obviously he didn't become the God of War in the ensuing centuries; but he does essentially live through the entire duration of Shu's existence and serve admirably even while over 70 years old. The heroic rescue of the utterly useless Liu Shan (in baby form) at Chang Ban is highly entertaining if not quite as rousing as Zhang Fei's role there.

He's also the mascot of Dynasty Warriors since 2 and the most overpowered character in Kessen 2; never lost a single duel with him in hundreds of attempts (RNG based on stats and morale). Zilong's sheer loyalty and honor and unapproachable humility make him the ideal subject more or less; give him a job and he does it well without complaint frequently killing a general (or six) in the ensuing melee.

#9 Liu Bei, Xuande, Emperor of Shu

Our Protagonist himself, Xuande's story is riveting and goes through a seemingly endless cavalcade of setbacks and failures before finally establishing himself in Chengdu (population now: 16 million; actually virtually every city mentioned in Three Kingdoms is a hugeass city now) and taking his "corner of the empire" as it were. Despite all his humility up to that point eventually it is seemingly sheer accident that brings about his own personal downfall at Yi Ling; in the wake of Lord Guan's death. The Three Brothers and the Oath under the Peach Tree are apocryphal (as is Guan being still loyal while under Cao Cao) but it is for much of the book the driving agency of the novel and also the root cause of Liu Bei who probably could've achieved supremacy if he was only willing to work alongside Wu instead of getting salty over Guan Yu's untimely demise. In the RoTK games "Liu Bei King of Hanzhong" is always a fun start.

For much of the first volume/30 chapters (which is definitely the best, though the second volume is similarly strong and has Red Cliffs) he is wandering from place to place, occasionally getting a bit of power and then immediately losing it (usually to Cao Cao); he is a competent soldier and general both historically and fictionally but requires the assistance of others to truly shine. An exceedingly noble soul with an increasingly vivid depiction.

#10 Diaochan

Truly the fairest of them all Diaochan is easily the best and most written about female character in the novel; which is to say not very much. Sun Shang Xiang/Sun Li and Mistress Zhen are around but only for brief segments and often in fairly demeaning ways. But Diaochan performs her role admirably as seductress without being particularly vile and brings down the heinous Tyrant Dong Zhuo using Lu Bu along the way. The mightiest warrior gets the best girl and they live happily ever after.

On a more serious note Three Kingdoms is essentially a military textbook discussing nonstop battles and campaigns with only a few brief interludes where they can include women in some way; not that women haven't had plenty of historical combat excellence (including Fu Hao and Hua Mulan) just not in 200 AD in China. I guess if they made it into a Netflix show which is pretty likely then women would show up a lot more often and perhaps even become generals and what not a la recent Dynasty Warriors depictions.

Wheel of Time Character Evaluations and General Thoughts

 

Moghedien, Nynaeve and Elayne

Greetings friends, I've been reading Wheel of Time now in the post Witcher book reading era and have a fair number of thoughts. Firstly I only fully read the first three books and the vast majority of Crown of Swords, this is because the first three books are very cohesive and self contained and more or less follow a coherent plot structure. After that the groups of characters and their plot lines are completely separate entities that have essentially no influence on each other whatsoever except for convenience, so I quickly identified the most interesting plots (predominantly team Girl Squad, Mat, and Black Ajah hunters) and simply stopped reading the ones that weren't. Overall I made it to book 12 since we're still looking for the elusive 13 and 14 somewhere in the house, but wiki filled in the blanks nicely. 

I am still reading plenty of Michener and it is very jarring going from Jordan to Michener, Michener can tell an extremely emotional story with historical implications and basis in reality in the span of 10 pages and on multiple occasions it takes Robert Jordan 500 pages to pass a single day (15 books averaging ~800 pages to pass 2 years); but I suppose that's why Michener is an esteemed author and Jordan is just like a top 10 fantasy writer in the past 30 years or so.

To get compliments out of the way Jordan does an extremely good job of setting up environments and cities so you feel like you understand them and their inhabitants (while you are in said city, cultures aside from the extremely different variants don't hold up outside of their own cities) and spends an ungodly amount of time in them individually. But since there's just so much fucking writing it doesn't matter if he takes forever because there's always at least one more city to explain for hundreds of pages. I understand and like Novigrad in the Witcher 3 but in the books its just an anonymous city the same as any other because the author doesn't spend 80% of the book describing environments and characters' innermost thoughts ("I wish Rand would fuck me silly" 90% of the time)

For more Witcher comparisons: Overall the Witcher books are much better because almost every character in the Witcher is outstanding and realistic and/or reasonable, the central plot (e.g. the Mythology episodes in the X-Files) of both series is quite weak and Jordan's themes (Violence/Power is good, women are strong, independent but really want Ta'veren fanfiction, "pillow friends" are okay even if most of them are conveniently evil) are maybe slightly more well thought out but nowhere near Tolkien allegory levels or anything. Both have the general weaknesses of Fantasy writing omnipresent, but the villains are moderately successful in the Witcher and utter failures in Wheel of Time.

The Wheel of Time is very likely to be a major television (been in pre production for years) show at some point but I'd assume due to the lack of sex (copious amounts of non sex related nudity) and extraordinarily slow pace it wouldn't garner that much attention relative to GoT or what have you; there's plenty of violence but its doled out in extremely foreshadowed massive explosions rather than layered intrigue. Also if it really went the distance the show would go on for like 9-15 seasons and while in the books only 2 years pass in that time frame that's not how it would work with real actors (or a reasonable story of course).

Without further ado here come my character ratings for select characters, if I don't mention a character just assume they're a 1-2 because there are hundreds upon hundreds of useless villains and nameless Aes Sedai that no one gives a fuck about. I would put artwork for each character before them but to be frank most of the fan art sucks for WoT except oddly for the Japanese book covers.

Elaida and Alviarin

Moghedien 9/10

Ah delightful, blessed Mog. I haven't really discussed this point yet but the heroes in Wheel of Time are INSANELY overpowered almost the entire time and there's like a 0% chance of failure at any given moment, perhaps some minor manipulations here or there that don't have any chance of causing a tragic event; even characters that you assume would die due to boredom or having disappeared for 6 books eventually come back and they're totally fine. That in mind the evil characters are mostly like "Yooo Ima fight Rand's bitch ass" and then they die, BUT Mog is so much of a coward that she somehow endures all of the shit that happens to her, the last one (arguably two) standing of the Forsaken/Chosen. The Forsaken are the Nazgul essentially except they have human attributes still. Losing to a random girl 1/50th of your age and 1/100th of your knowledge? That's fine. Enslaved by said character for a whole book? Mog endures. Shamed by Satan and enslaved to the Witch King? Mog doesn't give a fuck, cowardice is the answer if good is too overpowered and by God Mog will live through everything and just keep trucking right along being shady and cowardly the whole way. A coward is the best villain the series, by far and more or less the only one with a plot arc or character development.

Mat 9/10

Best Fantasy Han Solo impersonation out there. He is kind of shit for the first two books but quickly becomes the universally regarded best character after that.

Nynaeve 8/10

Nynaeve is the one good character that actually has a significant weakness for much of the books and it makes her more and more interesting over time. Essentially before she can embrace her DBZ powers she has to be mad, if she's not mad then she's useless. She's actually pretty lame in the first book but they develop her being mad all the time so well and make fun of it so frequently that she becomes both comedic and relatable; greatly enhances whoever is around her at any given time. She does simp for Lan but Lan is pretty hype so that's cool; also not a polygamist. Her portrayal doesn't seem to be overly sexist in contrast to most of the other major female characters. Nynaeve's healing of Siuan is the best scene in the whole series and takes an insane amount of time to develop but actually feels like it was necessary to create the emotional impact.

Alviarin 8/10

Alviarin is the only other pure evil character that I like a fair amount, she never actually has that much power beyond shitting on Elaida to comedic effect and kind of just serves as a late game Egwene foil; but her POV is always entertaining and her seeming ubiquitousness quite solid. If anything I'd assume she didn't become more interesting just because Jordan forgot to make the Mesaana plot arc more compelling. She gets touched by Satan himself and that's fairly metal.

Siuan Sanche 8/10

Siuan is the initial Amyrlin Seat (the head honcho for the good mages) before being stilled and replaced by Elaida; after she escapes she joins team girl squad and becomes a really entertaining character. Uses Fish metaphors with reckless abandon.

Thom Merrilin 8/10

The other Gandalf in the Eye of the World, comes back to life much quicker though. Fun character, kills a king and sends a realm into chaos off camera but is still around to make boring characters more interesting for ages afterward.

Morgase 8/10

Elayne's mother and could have been part of the most interesting plot arc if it wasn't hastily discarded when Pedron Niall died unceremoniously in a prologue. Well developed and actually has genuine female reactions to things that aren't incessant fawning.

Rand 7/10

What if Goku/Jesus was an insane tyrant that killed tens of thousands of people and had a Brigham Young number of wives yet people still loved him anyway because of ancient prophecies? Cool idea? That's more or less the entire story of Wheel of Time, unfortunately a large chunk of Rand is incredibly dull and uninteresting somehow; mostly because of how horrifically bland the Aiel are. That said he's great for the first 3 books and then returns to a really interesting state from like books 6-8 and oscillates from decent to great thereafter.

Lan  7/10

Guan Yu as written by a Southern Christian military academy graduate. He's your standard Seven Samurai elite type character but has his mildly entertaining moments on top of that.

Moiraine 7/10

Moiraine is Gandalf. I haven't read the part where Moiraine comes back 20 years after she died in real life (i.e. when the books were written), but it sounds okay. Her death is too foreshadowed but I admire that Jordan stuck to her dying for so long, Sanderson brought her back so hard to criticize or formulate the how and why of it (obviously Jordan intended it to be so) Not quite 2B levels of dying tragic but reasonably effective nonetheless.

Egwene 6/10

Egwene is a tough one, she is ludicrously overpowered too early and quite boring for a large chunk of the story, but she does have by far the best arc in the last three books when she becomes Egwene Luther King and has a pacifist rebellion inside the White Tower. Her being a good character is largely informed by Siuan as advisor, before that point she is very dull and made duller by her exposure to the Aiel. It is interesting that she's such a pacifist with Aes Sedai and then turns around and executes 50 people in the blink of an eye, then plans to assault the tower to bring down Elaida (conveniently unnecessary) after avoiding that for two thousand pages. The last arc I was interested in prior to running out of books.

Cadsuane 6/10

Cadsuane is a Moiraine surrogate introduced out of fucking nowhere, her character design is boring but her presence in the story is really interesting so it works out alright.

Elaida 5/10

Elaida herself is a fairly uninteresting character but her presence in fiction as an incompetent dictator I think is fascinating and relatively unique. Usually this sort of person would either be pure evil or extremely competent in fiction, instead she's kind of just an arrogant buffoon which leads to various comedic situations during her tenure as Amyrlin.

Lanfear 5/10

Lanfear/Selene/Cyndane is a pretty interesting character initially but eventually becomes an obvious cocktease; the other seductress forsaken follow her actions in similar fashions they just go about it in a more mundane way. Her initial demise is mildly interesting and her subsequent domination by the Witch King makes her a tad more relatable.

Berelain 5/10

The one seductive female character who isn't obviously evil, she serves to make the Perrin plot arc somewhat bearable until Morgase appears to carry it for a while.

Leane 5/10

Leane is a completely dull blank slate character until stilled and then becomes a solid foil/support for Siuan and Egwene, seems very likable overall.

Birgitte 5/10

Elayne's Warder and legendary hunter, mostly works well because of the Nynaeve/Elayne/Birgitte Pillow Friend love triangle, gets a bit boring afterward.

Min 5/10

Min's concept is cool and ambitious (she auto foreshadows events that might not happen for another 10 books), but she's a Rand simp like Aviendha and Elayne; a voluntary polygamist. Her chapters with Siuan and Leane are amazing.

Elayne 4/10

Elayne is actually a much better character than Egwene early in WoT but becomes less and less interesting over time. She and Egwene are very similar characters but Elayne becomes a bit angrier and less of a mediator over time, perhaps influenced by her long relationship with Nynaeve. Wants the Rand cock much more than anyone else and eventually is impregnated by our noble polygamist hero, then becomes quite dull afterward. Supposed to be a powerful regal queen or something but it is really hard to respect this kind of portayal of an ostensibly powerful woman having absolutely zero interest in anything but one fairly uninteresting (if immensely overpowered) dude.

Aviendha 3/10

The third Rand Simp of the bunch, she is Aiel and therefore boring but I think she is also just poorly developed fundamentally. Suffers from being in scenes with too many characters until her role becomes background noise; eventually is independent of that but in boring contexts.

Perrin 3/10

Perrin is a pretty solid character up until he gets married, then he's boring as fuck (His wife is similar in that regard).

I'm very interested in the Black Tower arc and Tylin but haven't finished those parts yet so can't really say much about Logain/Mazrim Taim/etc. without that information.

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.